Wednesday, June 3, 2009

I have seen many application launchers in the past but I haven’t seen anything as powerful and as exhaustive as Executor.

Executor's default skin looks a lot like Launchy, another pretty slick and simple application launcher. To launch an application or file or folder just type the first few letters of the application and it will generate a drop down list with matching programs, files, and folders. The notable part is unlike most application launchers which can only search start menu entries or program files, Executor can search the entire hard drive. And it’s reasonably fast.

Another handy feature is the ability to create keyword shortcuts for applications. For example, you can create a keyword “ff” for Firefox so that you just have to type “ff” to launch it.

Executor also has an inbuilt calculator. To perform a calculation precede it with a #, for example #678*45 [enter]. It also has a stop watch, timer and alarm.

The program supports several special commands like typing $M$ minimizes all windows, typing $APPS$ or simply “apps” displays a list of all running applications, $MUTE$ or “mute” mutes the speaker and so on.

Other useful features worth mentioning are:

Maintains history of run commands

Supports wildcard search

Full support for keyboard shortcuts

Ability to access Windows context menu from within Executor

Shortcuts to shutdown, hibernate, standby the computer

Open URLs

Override default file handling programs. Example: open PDF files in Adobe Reader even though the default PDF program is say Foxit Reader.

Executor has a ridiculous number of features and option, it’s impossible to discuss them all. Just make sure to go through their help files, you might just find the feature you have been looking for.

3 comments:

Seems like a pretty slick application. I'll have to give it a spin. Here is another one that is currently in Beta that does all the things listed here and so much more. clicketysplit.com The best part is it pays shares its revenue with you as an incentive to use and share it. It is by far the best looking and most intuitive.